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Gjpyright January, 1913, by 

THE SISTERS OF MERCY 

Wilkes-Barrfi, Pennsylvania 



Raeder Publishing Comijany 
Wilkes-Bart^, Pa. 



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Prpfare 



"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 

To know and to realize are just a trifle less far apart 
than to know and not to know. The superb pictures so 
often painted against the oriental sky— framed by receding 
night and the horizon — just at the break of day, are well 
known but badly realized and consequently poorly appre- 
ciated. The exceptional one, who does realize, has an 
enraptured tingle shot through every fiber of his sentient 
being and every faculty of his soul. Admiration, reverence, 
praise and love of the Omnipotent Artist thrill the extremes 
of his nature. The one who knows only, rarely looks up 
a second time, and thus it comes that even the Master's 
work is held commonplace. Just a glance and nothing 
more. 

This phenomenon is urged in justification of the present 
volume, Selections from "Parerga," as found in "Cedar 
Chips." The compiler claims no merit except that of new 
combinations which she, a student and teacher, hopes may 
attract a more adequate recognition to the originals. Efforts 
along this line may be applauded, too, in these days of 
Free Libraries, Circulating Libraries, Carnegie Libraries and 
the rest ; particularly, if one may pin one's faith to Emerson's 
dictum : " The Colleges furnish us no professors of books 
and I think no chair is so much needed." May this book 
find an honored place on the literary Signal Corps. Prosit ! 



JOHN J. McCABE. 



Wilkes-Barre, Pa. 
January twentieth, nineteen thirteen 



These selections from "Parerga" are used 
by permission of the author, Rev. P. A. 
Canon Sheehan, D. D., and the publishers, 
Messrs. Longmans, Green, and Co., to 
whom 1 am indebted for this kindness. 

The Compiler. 



®fl (§m 21alii| of Mnt^ 



I "have been at a great feast and stolen 
the scraps." 

"Selections have their justification. They 
serve a double object, — to introduce and 
to remind. They provide the unadventurous 
reader with the easiest way to learn a little 
of an author he feels he ought to know ; and 
they recall the fruits of fuller study to the 
memories of those who have passed on to 
other fields." 



Cedar Chips 



;ne 



"I would ask thee three questions," said the 
Prince. "And first: when is man greatest?" 

"When he laughs amid his tears ; when he suf- 
fers, and is silent; when he labours, although he 
foresees he never shall be paid," answered the man. 

"Where is woman greatest?" asked the Prince. 

"By the cradle of her child, by the couch of the 
dying, at the feet of God," said the man. 

"When is God greatest ?" asked the Prince. 

"There are no degrees in God," said the man de- 
voutly. "He is always greatest and best." 

"Come!" said the Prince to his companion; "I 
have found him whom I sought." 



Two Cedar Chips 



I know that some people decry sentimentality, — 
good, pious people, — on the score of religion; fash- 
ionable people because it is emotional ; and emotion 
is the one unforgivable sin. The former forget that 
shortest, but sweetest text in all Holy Writ : And 
Jesus zvept! The latter might know that it is this 
very emotionalism that marks them off from the 
animal creation, inasmuch as it is neither instinct 
nor passion, nor sensuous nor base, but only some 
higher element, consecrated by a memory tenacious 
of what is tender and reverent, and softened down 
by that sense of dependence or protection that is the 
highest bond of social life. Oh. yes! Thank God 
for our poets ; and thanks, O shade of Tennyson, for 
that line, no matter how sad it may be : 

"The tender grace of a day that is dead 
Shall never come back to ine." 



Cedar Chips """fee 



(dnntraHta of iCtfp 

Nothing surprises me more than the contrasts 
of life. I notice that sometimes a little circumstance 
that passes unheeded and ineffectual in every-day 
life, becomes suddenly magnified in a certain junc- 
ture of accidents into an event of vast importance. 
And the most trivial offence against morality, which 
perhaps for generations has passed unheeded, sud- 
renly develops into a crime, which receives exem- 
plary but disproportionate punishment. But these 
singular contrasts are in no wise so manifested as in 
the estimate that is placed by men on human life. 
Here in the wards of a hospital is a little child 
whose life is imperilled in the grip of some dire 
disease. Lights are lowered ; footfalls are made 
inaudible by slippers of felt ; night and day, a skilled 
and trained nurse never leaves that bedside; grave 
doctors come in three or four times a day, examine 
with knitted brows the diaries or nectaries of the 
nurses — pulsations, temperature, food, liquids, the 
action of medicines ; develop furious tempers if 
there is the slightest appearance of neglect; anx- 
iously consult with one another; open heavy tomes 
for new lights ; go away perturbed ; return with 
deeper furrows on their foreheads; and all this 
science and skill and zeal — to save that little thread 
of life that vibrates in that tiny child. 



fo"' Cedar Chips 



And if death intervenes doctors and nurses feel 
that they are defeated and shamed. They pass by 
that little waxen figure with averted eyes and down- 
cast heads. Death is the victor, and he waves his 
black flag in derision above their heads. There was 
life, — life in its most humble and tiniest form, and 
they have failed to save it. Yet those same doctors 
will pass from the bedside of that child where they 
fought such a desperate battle, and, taking up the 
morning newspaper in the hospital surgery, read 
with perfect composure and little interest of twenty 
thousand lives lost in a tidal wave in Japan, or a 
thousand lives lost in a South American earthquake, 
or a regiment or two blown to atoms suddenly by 
a concealed mine in some mad human conflict. How 
do you explain it? Professional honour? No. 
That won't do. Honour is not at stake. They 
have done all that men can do. Tenderness for 
that child ? No, alas ! The cases are too common : 
and tenderness vanishes through familiarity. And 
they don't allude to honour ; and they don't assume 
a tenderness they are far from feeling. No! It is 
life! life! It is their duty, their vocation, to save 
life, no matter how mutilated and miserable it shall 
be. And they have failed. 



Cedar Chips f'^« 



Here is a poor young girl who sat out 
during the warm days in the sunshine, eagerly 
grasping every sunbeam to extract from it a life- 
elixir. A few years ago, conscious of her great 
beauty, she almost spurned the flags of the village 
street, as she walked with springing step in all her 
Sunday finery, and knew that the eyes of many hun- 
gered after her. Then her own home became too 
small for her ambition. America alone was large 
enough for her desires. She went away, became a 
unit, an insignificant unit amongst millions, whose 
eyes, dazzled with the glare of gold, had no sight 
for her beauty. Then came sickness, sadness, a 
craving for the old home, where she could at least 
die in peace, with friendly faces around her. She sat 
out during these few weeks, patient and sorrowful, 
her physical beauty etherealised by the dread dis- 
ease that was slowly eating away her life. She has 
disappeared. It is easy to imagine the rest. The 
eternal hacking cough, the night-sweats, the ever- 
growing weakness, the depression, the despair — the 
calling on God at the midnight hour to plunge her 
into the blessed forget fulness of a dreamless sleep! 



5« Cedar Chips 



And yet, if one in mercy, whispers even the name 
of death as the one hope-giver, she shudders, looks 
frightened, and weeps. She cries all night long for 
unconsciousness, for sleep. But the unconscious- 
ness of death is an unspeakable terror. Why this 
inconsistency? Is not death a blessed thing. — God's 
greatest and most beautiful angel, who comes to us 
so softly, and so gently unweaves the bands of flesh, 
and touches so quietly that wound that the very 
touch is an anaesthetic ; and gradually weakens and 
uncoils the springs of existence, so that when at last 
he touches the last frail thread, it snaps without pain, 
and the soul sinks into a langour that is a sweet pre- 
lude to the eternal rest? Why do men fear it? Is 
it the inertia of life that will not bear transmission? 
Or the habit of life that will not bear being broken? 
Or the dread of 

"The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
No traveller returns " ? 

Or a foolish fear, as of children who see spectres 
everywhere, and will not walk on unknown land. 
lest unseen terrors should leap forth to paralyse or 
appal ? 



Cedar Chips ^®^*° 



©I|p Mm Witl} tl|r ^at 

I am not at all sure but that manual training 
should go hand in hand with, and even precede, 
mental training. Very often the mind, slower in its 
development than the body, can afford to wait. And, 
besides, manual training is mental training, inas- 
much as it develops powers of observation, accuracy 
of thinking, patience in watching details, and the 
labour of perseverance. But, apart from that, no 
mental training is a compensation for feeble mus- 
cles, weak nerves, myopia, and the host of other 
evils that are inseparable from purely sedentary 
lives ; and no mental acquirement or intellectual 
success is compensation for that growing contempt 
for honest manual labor which is becoming one of 
the most vicious and unpleasant symptoms of our 
advanced civilization. "Back to the land!" is the 
cry of all economists of the present day ; and "Back 
to manual work !" may also be the warcry of those 
who are painfully conscious that our advanced civil- 
ization is more or less that of a race in its decrepi- 
tude, and on the downgrade towards extinction. At 
least, it seems very certain to some minds that it is 
the "man with the hoe," and not the man with the 
pen, we need mostly in these times. 



E'g*^' Cedar Chips 



Hence I cannot help feeling a certain contempt 
or loathing when I behold young men, just budding 
into the twenties, calmly putting the pillows of old 
age under their elbows, and settling down to a long 
life of most ignoble inactivity. It is not alone the 
Sybaritic baseness and selfishness of the thing that 
repels, but the very horror at the incongruity of 
studied idleness and uselessness amidst the general 
activities of Nature. Clearly these are mere para- 
sites of Nature, and the word has an ill signification. 
It means not only idleness and uselessness, but 
theft, disregard for others' rights, preying on the 
industries of others, eating bread that is not right- 
eously earned. It may be a safe life and a secure 
one, where none of the lower evils are encountered, 
and there is always a kind of dulcet monotone of un- 
disturbed serenity. But if great trials are avoided, 
great deeds also remain undone, and, in hugging a 
miserable sense of security, the possibility of noble- 
ness is utterly lost. 



Cedar Chips Nine 



&nmr O^rrat SJJral 

Every man should have a great ideal in life — 
some high point in character or action to be aimed 
at, even though it be never attained. No man is 
absolute arbiter of his fate, or parcellor of his des- 
tiny. Will-power counts for much, but only when 
conscience is laid aside. "If you want to make your 
way in the world," says a witty French writer, "you 
must plough through humanity like a cannon-ball, 
or you must glide through it like a pestilence." Had 
he his countrymen Napoleon and Voltaire before 
his mind, when he penned these words ? But "mak- 
ing one's way in the world" is not the attainment of 
the high ideal of which I speak. It is rather a low 
ideal, the poor ambition of fox or beaver, or their 
human types in commerce or the professions. It is 
an animal instinct. It marks a man as belonging to 
a degenerate type. It is not the symbol or phrase 
that designates the higher call to the higher issues 
towards which humanity is bound to tend. 



Ten Cedar Chips 



Better to have written on our tombs : "Labo- 
ravi," or "Passus sum/' than "Felicissimus fui." I 
have seen two faces quite lately on whose foreheads 
such inscriptions had been already chiselled. One 
was the face of a gentlewoman, grown old in peace 
and prosperity, on whom the world had always 
smiled. Peace had been her portion, and old age 
was not infirmity, but the crown and consummation 
of the unbroken felicities that had been her lot in 
life. One could be thankful, but one could not wor- 
ship there. The other had been sculptured by life- 
long sorrow, — perpetual sickness, loss of material 
resources, falling away of friends, deception where 
honour had been expected, derision for no fault but 
for having borne the whips of Fate. It was one of 
those faces, which externally calm, are ever ready 
to break their surface serenity by the trembling of 
a lip or the gathering and falling of a silent tear. 
One might well worship here. We are in the sanc- 
tuary of sorrow. 



Cedar Chips ^' 



even 



An 3lmparttal but MnrraBnnablr ®i|tng 

It is hard to argue against the fear of Death, 
especially with the young. So many passed by, and 
they chosen ! So many old and forlorn creatures 
for whom life had no pleasure, because no hope, 
trembling on the verge, and yet apparently forgotten 
by the angel Death! So many worthless creatures, 
whose lives do not contain a single utility, — nay, 
whose very existence seemed detrimental to every 
cause and individual with whom they came in con- 
tact ; and lo ! Death passes them by, and leaves the 
barren fig-trees untouched ; and lays his heavy hand 
on some life, that was bourgeoning out in all fair 
promises of vast utility to itself and mankind. So 
argues a second patient of mine, a young man, 
stricken with that dread disease, cancer. He is not 
impatient nor disconsolate. He is resigned. But he 
cannot understand. He is perplexed by the mystery 
of things. He has had his sentence of death duly 
passed on him ; and the numbered hours are fleeting 
swiftly by. But he is young. He clings to hope. 
The local doctor is on his holidays. He has a chance 
now. Perhaps some other may speak a word of 
hope. He summons him by telegram. He presents 
the following diagnosis of his formidable disease. 



Twelve Cedar Chips 



A Prraonal liagnnata 

"Seven months ago, in South Africa, I under- 
went an operation for epithelioma of the antrum, 
necessitating the excision of the left superior max- 
illa ; and, on account of exopthalmus, the left eye 
had to be enucleated. Since then my voice has been 
badly impaired ; and so I wrote down these partic- 
ulars, my artificial palate not working properly of 
late. A few months after the operation, anaesthesia 
extended along the temple and forehead on the left 
side. It has now crossed the middle line, and in- 
volves the whole forehead and scalp. I have been 
laid up for five days with a swollen eye-socket. It 
is with respect to the latter that I wish to consult 
you. Since the operation, the socket has been in a 
state of inflammation, with a profuse whitish dis- 
charge. It is now greatly swollen. The temple on 
the same side is also much swollen. The pain is 
not very great, but there is a feeling of uneasiness 
and oppression. The wound cavity left by the oper- 
ation is looking well, and there is no evidence of re- 
currence in that quarter. I cannot account for the 
accentuation of the anaesthesia, for its extension, 
and for the aggravated state of the eye-socket. I 
would like you to tackle the eye-socket particularly ; 
that region is very anaesthetic, and is afifecting my 
head greatly. I may mention there is still some 
granulated tissue and constant extravasation of 
blood behind the eye-socket or at the floor of the 
orbit, as I pay constant attention to it, and know 
how it is getting on." 



Cedar Chips Thirteen 



I doubt if there were on this planet a more sur- 
prised man than that doctor, when he read this diag- 
nosis. The science of medicine is a secret science. 
Very wisely, its professors have wrapped up all its 
principles and discoveries in an occult and dead 
language. Its prescriptions are written in a kind of 
luminous shorthand, of which only some letters are 
of Roman type, the rest being cabalistic signs. It 
is a kind of calyptic cypher of which only one man 
holds the key. It is pitiful, but instructive to see 
how an ordinary layman turns over the mysterious 
paper in his hand, and stares in blank ignorance at 
it; and to witness his surprise when the chemist 
glances over it, and proceeds to interpret it in act. 
Then all medical books are written in great pon- 
derous symbols of sesquipedalian Greek, as if the 
writers kept Liddell and Scott always on their desks, 
and picked out the longest and hardest words. And 
then — watch the contemptuous and angry stare with 
which any layman, or even neophyte, is crushed who 
dares to touch even the fringe of medical mystery. 
It is a kind of sacrilegious invasion into a region 
where only the initiated are admitted ; and happy is 
the unhappy wight who is let ofif easily with the 
warning: "You had better leave these things alone, 
young man !" 



fourteen Cedar Chips 



It is the same with the Science of law. Here the 
adage holds, "The man who is his own lawyer has a 
fool for a client." And we know how sternly is the 
prescription enforced in the courts of justice, that 
no man can be heard unless through the lips of a 
lawyer. You may be as learned as Scaliger, and 
have all the legal lore of Chitty and Bacon and Coke 
at your fingers' ends : but if you presume to in- 
fringe upon the hereditary rights of the legal pro- 
fession, you may be assumed to have sacrificed your 
best interests. "By whom are you represented, sir?" 
is the dire question. "By myself!" "Oh!" And 
your case is lost, that is, if you are permitted to 
speak at all ; for, in certain courts, you cannot plead 
except through the instrumentality of a lawyer. Is 
this right.'' That is not the question. We are but 
stating facts — that a cordon is drawn around the 
learned professions by rule and statute, by prescrip- 
tion and tradition ; and all who are not initiated into 
the mysteries, who have not eaten dinners and sawed 
bones, are rigidly excluded. Right or wrong this 
exclusiveness undoubtedly surrounds the professions 
with a certain atmosphere of reverence which mate- 
rially helps to keep sacred the inner workings, which 
would soon be profaned by exposure. 



Cedar Chips ^^' 



een 



Strange to say, it is only theological science that 
has no such bounds and ramparts as these. It is a 
commonage where every one may stray at his own 
sweet will. It has been invaded, overrun by every 
class and every individual from the beginning of 
Christianity until now. Under the Jewish dispensa- 
tion, it was kept apart and sacred from the multi- 
tude, — hedged in by every kind of legislation, prim- 
itive and prohibitive. No man dared touch the Holy 
Mountain ; no one but the High Priest was privileged 
to enter the Holy of Holies. One tribe was set 
apart for the priesthood. All teaching and all legis- 
lation came from the lips of a consecrated priest- 
hood. Still more exclusive and dominant were, and 
are, the sacred hierarchies of the Eastern religions. 
The Lamas and Brahmins allow no lay-interference 
with their privileges. Even kings and emperors 
must keep aloof. Their lamaseries and monasteries 
are sacred ground, where no one dare trespass with- 
out permission. Their traditional teachings are such 
that no man dares contravene or challenge. But no 
sooner was Christianity established than a Simon 
Magus tried to penetrate and purchase its mysteri- 
ous powers : and from the first, laymen, from the 
Emperor down to the prefect, sought to usurp the 
sacred rights of the Christian priesthood, and mould 
the dogmas of the Christian faith to suit political 
exigencies or private whims. 



Sixteen Cedar Chips 



Then came the great rebellion, with its cardinal 
principle that theology was no science ; that religion 
had no mysteries ; and that every man had a perfect 
right to frame his own dogma according to the di- 
rection of private interpretation. iVnd whilst all 
other sciences became more exact in their guiding 
laws, and sought to render more rigid every day 
the boundaries of professional exclusiveness ; whilst 
great generalisations broke up into special depart- 
ments, and each department surrounded itself by 
ahattis after abattis of rules and ceremonies, the 
vast domain of theology was broken into by every 
scarilegious and impious speculator, and all its mys- 
teries were profaned by hands that held them up 
to the public gaze either as commonplace truths that 
no man could deny, or fraudulent presumptions that 
no man could accept. And to-day, scientific men of 
every rank and grade, biologists, geologists, astron- 
omers, legislators in every shape, literary men 
through the press, judges on the bench, and even 
the "man in the street" crowd through the broken 
defences and tumbled barricades to plough and sow, 
and reap a sorry harvest where once was the wheat 
that made the Bread of Life, and the wine that ger- 
minated virgins. 



Cedar Chips Seventeen 



An Unart^nttfir Srparturr 

Apart from the desecration and the unreasoning 
fury and folly of all this, it is a distinct departure 
from the secret and inviolable laws that direct the 
operations of evolution in Nature and Society. For 
we know that the lower the organism, the more sim- 
ple are its organs and operations. In certain zoo-^ 
phytes, each part is capable of every function. As 
we advance higher in the scale, the functional ener- 
gies, becoming more extended^ demand new organs 
for their operation ; until we reach the higher mam- 
mals, where every function has its own specific or- 
gan, localized and developed. The same tendency 
exists in the body politic, where all the energies are 
again speciiically located, and, though obedient to 
and progressing from a common centre, are concen- 
trated in some council, or society, or department, 
whose operations, if controlled from a centre, are 
yet specifically distinct, and more or less independ- 
ent. In the science of theology alone, there is, on 
the part of the masses, an idea that, dissolved as a 
science, it had better be allowed to drift back to 
primitive elements — which are the thoughts of indi- 
viduals — for dogmata, and the vagaries of human 
passion for moral and ethical principle. 



E^li'een Cedar Chips 



And yet theology is a science, a great science, 
a complicated science; a science to the upbuilding of 
which were devoted the energies of the greatest in- 
tellects that have become incarnated on this planet. 
A world of iconoclasts, such as that in which we 
live, may pass by with unbowed heads the statues 
of St. Augustine and St. Thomas ; and may affect 
never to have seen the shrines where saints and 
scholars, like Ambrose and Bernard, are niched for 
ever. But they cannot break them. And so long as 
the printing-press shall last, there shall remain the 
record of their studies in the greatest of human sci- 
ences, and the results of their researches into the 
recesses of mysteries, which are to-day, as yesterday, 
as closed secrets to the eyes of science as they were 
when men believed that the heavens were domed 
above the earth as the centre and pivot of space. It 
is pitiful to see the easy and flippant way in which 
modern sciolists dispense with the consideration of 
questions that agonized the minds of TertuUian and 
Augustine. 



Cedar Chips Nineteen 



No Mgatrrg in Mthxtint 

Yes, my good doctor was much surprised. He 
seemed not able to take his eye from that page where 
the dying boy had recorded the dread symptoms of 
the disease that was slowly eating away his life. 
He whistled softly to himself, looked curiously at 
the patient, whispered the mysterious words, "epi- 
thelioma," "enucleated," "antrum," "maxilla," and 
finally asked : 

"You have been a medical student?" 

"No!" was the faint, muffled whisper that came 
from the diseased throat. "I am a journalist!" 

"Oh !" 

"But," the doctor said, after a pause, "no one 
but a medical expert could have written this ?" 

"I made a study of the disease when I knew I 
was affected," was the reply. 

"Rather a foolish thing," said the doctor, main- 
taining the professional exclusiveness. 

"Not at all," was the reply. "There is no mys- 
terv about it." 

The doctor shook his head. This was rank 
heresy to his mind. He turned to me. 



■»» 



Twenty Cedar Chips 



lltra (Crrpi&am 

"Strange," he whispered, although the hideous 
malady had destroyed the boy's hearing, "how things 
work. The blow falls here and there; and there 
appears to be no rule, no uniformity, no consist- 
ency." 

I nodded acquiescence. 

"If any one were to ask why this boy, clever, 
accomplished, enterprising, should have been struck 
down on the very threshold of a brilliant career, 
whilst hundreds of mere hinds and louts go free, 
where would be the answer?" 

The good doctor never saw that he was passing 
ultra crepidarn. He who would resent, who did re- 
sent, the trespass of that poor boy upon the sacred 
precincts of medical science, was now unconsciously 
usurping the office of theologian. For medical sci- 
ence has only to deal with facts, I presume, — physio- 
logical facts, pathological facts, materia mcdka, etc., 
etc. What has a doctor to do with philosophy, — 
with motives, reasons, causes of things? Let him 
keep to his scalpel and his stethoscope ! But no ! 
Every one must have his say about these transcen- 
dent mysteries that have ever stupified and puzzled 
the human mind, as if they were market-merchan- 
dise, to be turned over, and pulled asunder, and ex- 
amined and valued by every hind, or huckster, or 
vivandicre, who wants a cheap bargain. Well, after 
all, it argues the existence of something more than 
a beaver or squirrel faculty in man, and, as such, 
is worthy of some esteem. I thought this, but did 
not say it to my good doctor. Then I took the 
thought home with me. It was my property. 



Cedar Chips Twenty-one 



An Autumnal QIgpp 

My first autumnal type has plunged suddenly 
downwards from affluence to poverty, and has kept 
his equanimity unruffled. He had been in the en- 
joyment of some thousands a year; had had a sub- 
urban villa so filled with all sorts of art-treasures 
that one could scarcely move around his rooms. 
The walls were so lined with etchings and engrav- 
ings, statuettes and pictures, bronze busts and 
plaques, that scarcely one square inch of paper was 
visible. Out of doors his gardens stretched up in 
stately terraces, one rivalling the other in splen- 
dour, until the whole beautiful vista terminated in 
a pavilion, again filled with all kinds of costly and 
artistic things gathered from repositories in the great 
cities of the world. Here, from time to time, that 
is very often, he brought together numerous friends 
from city and town, regaled them with every luxury, 
amused them with every kind of entertainment, 
until the place became a little Paradise above the 
sea, which lent to the scene its own enchantment. 
Then came the crash. The whole thing vanished 
like a dream. It was many years after that when I 
visited the place again. I had seen it in the very' 
zenith of its glory, and had taken away and stored 
up in the maps of memory a beautiful picture of the 
place, of its surroundings, of its generous and kindly 
master. I passed by in the dusk of the evening. The 
high wall that shielded from vulgar observation all 
this loveliness was broken down. I went in. The 
magnificent pavilion was a mass of ruin ; its perfect 
flower-beds were overgrown with nettles. The 
splendid urns that capped the pedestals were slimy 
and broken. It was a picture of ruin and desola- 
tion. 



Twenty-two Cedar Chips 



Soon after I met the former master of this 
ruined paradise. Ahhough past his seventieth year, 
he was still in all his autumnal splendour. Fate and 
ill-fortune had not touched him. The same bright- 
ness, the same cheerfulness, the same bonhomie, the 
same optimism that had made him the centre of his 
circle some years before, had not abandoned him in 
adversity and penury. "I am a happier man to-day," 
he said, "than when I had thousands to spend. I 
have a room during the summer down near the sea, 
and two rooms here in the city for the winter, and a 
cool hundred a year. I have no responsibility now. 
I needn't ask John, Dick, or Harry to dine, and to 
tell you the truth," he added, with a smile, "I'm not 
likely to be asked myself." 

"What?" I cried. "You, who entertained like 
a prince — do you mean to tell me that you are never 
challenged by any of your former friends to a paltry 
dinner?" 

"Never!" he said frankly. "And what is more, 
they cut me here in this very street!" 

"The hounds!" I couldn't help saying. "Do 

you mean to say that not even has an open 

house for you?" 

He shook his head, but always smiling. 

"He doesn't see me when we pass here. Or 
rather he does, and goes to the other side of the 
street." 



Cedar Chips Twenty-three 



"Why, the last time I saw him," I cried, " 'twas 
in the Pavilion. He had a glass (and a good long, 
tall one it was) of champagne in his hand, and he 
was diving into a lobster salad as hard as he could. 
I remember I had to jump his long spider legs when 
I was coming away." 

"My dear fellow," he said, "don't you know 'tis 
all human nature ? When I had all these friends at 
the Pavilion, feeding them and entertaining them, I 
was pleasing myself. There is one phase of human 
nature. When they choose to cut me, there is an- 
other. Did I expect anything else? Certainly not. 
I know the world too well. And what difference 
does it make? I can now pass along here without 
bothering about anyone. I can stop and look at the 
shop windows without being molested. I know 
no one, and no one knows me. Tant mieux! 
Hallo Jiff! Jiff! Jiff!" 

He took a boatswain's whistle from his vest 
pocket and looked anxiously around. Far away, a 
little black, woolly terrier was dodging tram-cars, 
side-cars, and passengers. When she heard the 
well-known whistle she scampered over to her mas- 
ter's feet. 

"Good day," he said; "I am glad to see you for 
old times' sake." 

"Good day," I replied; "I am glad to have seen 
the greatest Irish philosopher after Berkeley." 



Tweniy-four Cedar Chips 



It is a gusty, windy, autumnal day. The wild 
west wind has burst his bonds and is thundering up 
from the horizon, driving huge black clouds before 
him, like the disorganized phalanxes of a conquered 
army. And he has caught in his fierce embraces the 
forest trees, and shaken them, and clashed them to- 
gether, till the whole sky is mottled with flying 
leaves, spinning in the whirlwind ; and the ground 
is growing thick with the red refuse of the dying 
year. And, quite appropriately, another autumnal 
type of character crosses my path. He is grizzled 
and gray before his time; and some sharper chisel 
than the years has cut channels in his cheeks, and 
sunk the orbits of eyes that smoulder in repose, but 
gleam with a terrible light when you touch one sub- 
ject. And how can you avoid it, when it embraces 
everything of interest, — that is, men and women — 
the world — the race — humanity Tolerant enough, 
polite, even charitable in a large measure, he be- 
comes absolutely ferocious when you turn the con- 
versation on the Zeit-Gcist. The fact is, he com- 
menced badly, — with a large, childlike, hopeful, 
trusting faith in human nature, which has now 
changed into a fanatical hatred. I can quite under- 
stand it, although he has never explained. 



Cedar Chips Twenty-five 



Sarlg SJttiratton 

I see him coming forth from a home where he 
was surrounded with all that was sweet and beauti- 
ful and sacred, where he never leaned against any- 
thing harder than a pillow, and the flutter of a rose- 
leaf was not allowed to ruffle his sleep. He was 
taught — O stulti et caeci corde! — that the whole 
world was like this! — that truth, honour, purity, 
sweetness, modesty, benevolence, were to be his 
guardian angels through life ; and that, above all, 
he should smile on the world to get back smiles in 
return. It was a long story, the story of his dis- 
illusion, for he clung with despairing tenacity to 
his childhood's principles, until, one by one, they 
came to be disproved, and the last shred of their 
protection was torn away, leaving him naked to his 
enemies. What was worse, he found, in all authors 
who had become sacred to him by reason of their 
lofty standing in literature or from early associa- 
tions, that the same principles, endeared to him by 
early teaching, were carefully inculcated until they 
had become a faith, a religion, interwoven into his 
life. 



Twenty-six Cedar Chips 



SiaiUuatnn 

The progress of the world, the perfectibiHty of 
man, the advance of the race from civilization to a 
yet higher civilization, the elimination of all phys- 
ical evil and all moral taint, until the apex was 
reached, where man should stand forth the immortal 
realization of an idea,— all these phrases and sen- 
tences had become the symbols and embodiment of 
the theories that had touched the enthusiasm of his 
youth, and inspired the more sober opinions of mid- 
dle age. Alas! slowly and painfully he awoke to 
the knowledge of human imperfection, deepening, as 
the years advanced, into a knowledge of human ig- 
norance and iniquity, and culminating in the autumn- 
nal years into a recognition or belief in almost uni- 
versal depravity. He was not saddened, but mad- 
dened, by the revelation. Even though it had slowly 
grown into a conviction, it carried with it the shock, 
the surprise of a sudden unveiling of deeps too 
terrible to be contemplated or measured. Like some 
monomania that is suddenly engendered by brain 
fever, or that grows out of painful experience, his 
mind was ever revolving around it ; and his conver- 
sation, no matter from what distant pole it started, 
invariably turned back to the one topic on which 
the wheels of thought moved as on a pivot. 



Cedar Chips Twenty-seven 



lEburatton nnh Sxprrirnrr 

"I can pardon a good deal," he would say, "but 
I cannot condone your crime in educating children 
as you do. You teach them that it is dishonourable 
to lie or steal ; you teach them to be merciful and 
kind and self-effacing; you teach them an altruism 
which is divine rather than human. And you teach 
all this on the understanding that the world will give 
back as it receives, and mirror the riant and bland 
expressions of ingenuous youth. You take that 
child from school, and the first lesson the world 
teaches him is, that all the wheels of life and society 
are moved by lying and hypocrisy. You place that 
boy behind a counter where, if he lies not, he is in- 
stantly dismissed. He is taught, and not only 
taught, but ordered, to put a price on his goods and 
merchandise not according to market values, or 
current charges, or a scale of legitimate profit, but 
according to the appearance of his customers. You 
put him in a fair or market. He instantly knows 
that he must lie foully for self -protection, for every 
man amongst these thousands has come hither to 
swindle or to cheat. You give him a profession. 
He lies with his fingers on his patient's pulse. And 
he will save the most consummate scoundrel from 
the gallows, and drive the most innocent beneath it, 
for that bribe called a fee." 



Twenty-eight Cedar Chips 



JIuBttrf ISlind 

"Look at your Courts of Justice. Every police- 
man knows that to gain the good-will of his officer, 
he must swear up to the mark. Every Crown Prose- 
cutor feels that he is not there to discriminate the 
guilty from the innocent ; but to put the halter 
around the neck of that trembling wretch in the 
dock. The quarry has to be run to ground, and 
he has to do it. That is all ! His professional rep- 
utation will suffer if that wretch escapes. Tears of 
wife or children, or thier unutterable delight ; de- 
spair of devils, or ecstasy of angels, such as will al- 
ternate in these human hearts contingently upon the 
one word uttered by yonder bland foreman. — these 
have nothing to do with the matter. He wants that 
one word, Guilty! otherwise that venison pasty 
will be tasteless, and that champagne will be flat as 
ditchwater. And all the time Justice stands blind- 
folded with her scales in her hands. Why should 
the bandage fall or be removed ? Will not her paid 
advocates lead her aright, and drop that heavy 
sword into the scales against the condemned with 
a solemn and conscientious P^ae Vktis? 



Cedar Chips Twenty-nine 



And your statesmen! Here is the sublime "He 
has Hed boldly," said Talleyrand. "There's the 
making of a mighty statesman in him." "Diplo- 
macy," "statecraft," "political foresight," "civic 
wisdom," etc., etc., what an accommodating lan- 
guage! How it lends itself to euphemisms! And 
how beautifully men gather up the skirts of easy 
words and wrap them around bald and naked ugli- 
ness, as the clothes of the world hide and dissemble 
all the ugliness of deformed humanity! "But," 
he cried, with a fillip of his finger, "a truce to all 
that! I don't heed it! Let the world damn itself 
in its own fashion. I'm not going to play the part 
of the faithful Abdiel. But," he cried with bitter 
emphasis, "if I had the education of children in my 
hands, I would have a Fagin-school with several 
Artful Dodgers in every parish to teach the young 
idea how to adapt itself to the larger and more intri- 
cate systems of prevarication and swindling that 
are current in the wide world of men. And I would 
teach them to steel their hearts against every human 
feeling; and smile as their seniors smile when they 
are practicing the arts of hypocrisy and deceit." I 
shuddered at this tirade against the species. He 
went away with his head down and a frown on his 
fine features. 



Thirty Cedar Chips 



QIirrl|i anb (HumuU 

The next evening, I thought, I should not let 
even one of such glorious October sunsets escape 
me. Fading and evanescent — as all beautiful things 
— indeed, as all things are (but somehow the beau- 
tiful seems more frail than the sombre and the 
dreadful, probably because we wish it to remain), — 
yet, there is no reason why we, too, frail and evan- 
escent beings, should not take from them such pleas- 
ures as they afford us. And surely, if there be a 
harmless gratification, it must be that wdiich arises 
from the contem])lation of such sublimities as the 
mighty Artist and Architect of the Universe pre- 
pares for his wondering, but ungrateful children. 
This evening, as if with the touch of a magician's 
wand, all the sombre splendours of last night had 
vanished; but there was cpiite enough of water- 
vapour to catch and reflect the beauty of the dying 
sun. Instead of vast purple and black cumuli, rest- 
ing like some mountain of desolation and grandeur 
on the rim of the horizon, long strata of cirrhous 
clouds stretched from north to south in parallel lines. 
The eastern horrizon was crowded with pink cloud- 
lets, darkening to deej) purple on the sky line, and 
in the zenith, the faint and feathery shadows were 
crimsoned, and then gently vanished, as the sun fell 
from his orbit into the burning and glowing west. 



Cedar Chips Thirty- 



one 



An Surntwg #tar 

But all the other cirrhous flakes of cloudlets were 
masses of burning gold resting on foundations of 
grey vapour, which, in turn, as the departing rays 
of the dying sun struck them, were transmuted into 
red and yellow nuggets of molten metal, with an 
occasional break through the green sky, as of an 
alloy to test their value. I had to shade my eyes 
from their blinding splendours, until, with involu- 
tion after involution, the glowing masses melted 
into each other, or dropped their golden radiances 
from cloud to cloud as the sun descended. It was as 
if some potent stage-manager or stage-painter was 
flinging his majestic colours broadcast over the vast 
curtain of the heavens, until, his palette run dry 
and exhausted, the splendours faded away, so si- 
lently, so gradually, with so much tenderness and 
pathos, that I could only think of the farewell kiss 
of a dying child, or the gradual fading away of those 
spirit-faces that artists have drawn on canvas, but 
never seen in the flesh. Then out came one star, 
dancing and caracoling in the broad heavens that he 
had now to himself. "Pah!"' I cried, for the sor- 
row of the thing had crept into my heart, "it is like 
a ballet dancer on the altar of a deserted cathedral !" 



TT'^'y-'^'o Cedar Chips 



"Say rather a herald of eternity!" said a voice, 
and a soft hand rested on my arm. I did not shake 
it off. I did not shake it off, because it was my 
Poet, my dreamer of dreams, my Alter Ego — the 
being with whom alone I can freely converse, and 
open out my mind with the certainty of being un- 
derstood and believed. With him alone I am at 
ease, for to him alone am I intelligible. When I 
converse with other men I feel that I am speaking 
to statues, which stare irresponsively at me. When 
I speak with him I know I am addressing a soul. 
With other men I speak about human topics : — 
their politics, their commerce, their wars, their food, 
their dress. With him I speak of higher subjects, 
— the soul, eternity, the course of history, the trend 
of human events : Nature, — the eternal Spring, 
earth with its thousand aspects, the Heavens with 
their dark secrets, Life, and the shadow that waits 
for us all with the keys. If ever I touch on merely 
human things, a cloud of disappointment and vexa- 
tion crosses his fine features. He is eloquently 
silent, and runs his fingers through tangled and un- 
combed locks, with just now the winter blossoms 
beginning to gleam through their gold. When I 
speak of higher things, his face glows. The foun- 
tains of the great deep are broken up. 



Cedar Chips Thirty-three 



An Apnlnga far Angrr 

"What are those tears for?" he said, for my 
eyes were red with the sorrow of the sunset, — type 
of all ephemeral and vanishing things. 

"For the sorrow of the world/' I said, "and its 
sad destinies; for the perishing of all that is most 
fair, and the permanence of all that is foul and sor- 
did. For the earth, which is but a cradle of suffer- 
ing; and for man, who weeps when he is born." 

"But you were more than this," he replied. 
"You were angry, and you used a scornful expres- 
sion. Now, that is an evil mood towards Nature or 
towards man." 

"Angry?" I cried. "Yes! I was. Who could 
help being angry in face of such deceitful and fad- 
ing splendours? And then, as if to mock me, out 
comes that flippant and foolish star, dancing on the 
floor of the firmament, and flapping his fingers in 
my face as if in derision? Why, 'tis all mockery, 
mockery, — earth, and sea, and sky, and the faces 
of children, and the roses in my garden ! Under- 
neath all is the grinning visage and the castanets of 
Death !" 

"Yes ! yes !" he cried, with an impatience that 
rarely showed itself in his fine face or courtly 
manners. "But why anger? Don't you know that 
the inevitable is also the indispensable ; and that it 
would never do for ephemeral beings such as we to 
be brought face to face with immortal beauty ?" 



Thirty.four Cedar Chips 



"There! You are always saying hard things," 
I cried. "The inevitable is the indispensable! 
What is it? What do you mean?" 

"What do I mean? Why, we have talked of 
these things a hundred times over, and yet you ask 
me what I mean. I mean simply this, that so long 
as we are but passing shadows, we are not capable 
of being confronted with infinite and permanent re- 
alities. That in fact, permanence is not for us, only 
the res caducae, the flitting and fading phantoms 
that belong to an order of things that preludes the 
stability of eternity. Hark, friend! If all that splen- 
dour over which you now wept had remained, you 
would have tired of it in an hour and gone back 
to your books, murmuring: 'The eye is not filled 
with seeing; nor the ear satisfied with hearing.' " 

It was true; and I had only to take refuge in 
silence. 

"But mark how foolishly you spoke," he con- 
tinued. "You wept over a piece of painted vapour 
— a little aerial moisture reddened by the setting 
sun; and you ridiculed what? The mighty sun, 
Arcturus. to which your sun is but a farthing candle, 
and which is now lighting up with unimaginable 
splendour the atmospheres of planets, to which our 
little earth is but a sand-grain. It is the old, old 
story. We cling to shadows and weep for them ; and 
then blaspheme the Eternal." 



Cedar Chips Thirty-five 



ilnrking thp Strrnal 

"But, but," I cried, confused, you speak thus 
because you are not mortal. You have no human 
feeling. You live amongst the stars. There is 
nothing but cold, frozen thought up there on the 
altitudes where you dwell with your poets and 
dreamers. Look, you, my friend, the tear that soils 
the cheek of a little child is more to me than if 
your Arcturus were to heave and burst his elephan- 
tine bulk, and strew all space with his fragments. 
This is our world ; and it is enough for us, at least 
whilst we are here." 

"Quite true," he replied. "Then why are you 
always dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of other 
things? Why did you sadden in that sunset? It 
was like yourself, transient and paltry. Whv did 
you not accept it as such? No! You went out 
beyond it : and you said it mocked you ; and you, in 
turn, mocked the Eternal." 

"It's enough to make any one savage." I cried, — 
"this eternal duplicity and deception of Nature. Lo ! 
splendours as of the third heavens, and behold, they 
are gone whilst we cry to them to remain forever !" 

" 'Tis not a subject for mockery, or savage an- 
ger," he said, meeklv. 

"What then?" I cried. 

"Infinite Pity !" he said. 



Thirty-six Cedar Chips 



"And men, with their infinite and ever-winding 
intrigues and deceptions ?" 

"Infinite Pity!" he said. 

"And those white women, half-angels, until you 
suddenly see some flash of soul that reveals their 
deformity?" 

"Infinite Pity!" he said. 

"And those placed aloft in the high domains of 
the world, to be burning and shining lights to their 
generation, until you come near and see the flame 
of their spirit flickering, unsteady, darkened with 
the smut of carbon, and swaying to and fro in every 
gust of passion?" 

"Infinite Pity!" he said. 

"And mighty statesmen, ordering the destinies of 
nations, but prepared to change sides and principles 
for a piece of ribbon from a sovereign, or a whifT of 
popularity from the great unwashed!" 

"Infinite Pity!" he answered. 

"And teachers, — poets, preachers, prophets, with 
their 'everlasting yeas,' and 'everlasting noes,' lead- 
ing mankind by the hand up the steep escarpments 
where valour and truth alone can find a footing; 
and then suddenly descending to the basest levels to 
quarrel over their cups, or play the valet to some 
coroneted patron?" 

"Infinite Pity!" he still answered. 



Cedar Chips Thiny-scven 



A liatinrtint! 

I shook him off — this Doppelganger of mine. I 
was wroth with him and with myself, wroth, above 
all, because I had to determine was this the final 
answer — the last response to the eternal enigma. 

Infinite Pity ! 

For all suffering and harmless things, yes ! For 
the redbreast frozen into iron on a January morn- 
ing; for the wounded creature of the woods that 
creeps into its hole to die unseen ; for the silver 
wonder of the brooks that lies gasping on the grass, 
held in the fierce steel of the fisherman; for my 
aged dog, who lies in his hutch in my yard and looks 
at me wnth such piteous dying eyes, they haunt me 
all the day long; for our human brother or sister, 
who calls for night, and night forgets its mercy, 
and who watches the faint dawn glimmering through 
the window-pane, with the prospect of another day 
of anguish ; for the wretch in the dock, with the 
merciless faces around him, steeled against all com- 
passion by merciless law ; for the victim helped to 
the scaffold, his arms supported by warders lest he 
should fall ; for the last October sunset, and the last 
rose that hovers in my garden over beds of snow, — 
for all weak things, for all stricken things, for all 
sad things, and all dying things, — Infinite Pity ! 
Yes ! By all means ! But for all the strength that 
smites pitilessly; for all the cunning that intrigues 
successfully; for all the duplicity that lies boldly; 
for all the smiles that cheat blandly ; for all the 
tyranny that grinds mercilessly ; for all that is strong 
and severe and pitiless : for all that is loathsome and 
degrading and masculated, — Infinite Pity? No! 



Thirty-eight Cedar Chips 



As the prophet of old foretold of the sweet and 
gentle Shepherd of Humanity, I think I could gather 
up and fold in my arms all tender, gentle, and frail 
things on earth, no matter how passion-swept, or 
into what deep abysses betrayed by their own inex- 
perience or the malevolence of others. Nay, even 
for one that "wanders like a lost soul upon the 
Stygian bank, waiting for waftage," I feel I could 
have great i^ity, which is akin to great love. But 
for the base nature, that comes to you sometimes 
in life, rubbing his shoulder against yours to pick 
your pockets, tossing out carelessly and confidingly 
a petty secret to get at your sealed and solemn 
sorrows, and then snap you up, as X'ivien did Merlin 
in the enchanted oak ; for the creature who comes 
fawning and purring around you, proffering his 
petty gifts, and protesting his disinterestedness until, 
thrown off your guard, you fling the creature what 
he wants, and he goes his way, his hand on the 
button of his pocket ; for all puny souls that have no 
circumference or scope of vision beyond that of a 
coin, and who think more of a piece of ribbon than 
of the colours of a simset, and whose base insolence 
to the weak is hardly more irritating than their base 
subservience to the strong, — I confess to a feeling of 
repulsion akin to that one feels for slimy and dan- 
gerous things ; no great wish to crush or annihilate, 
but a decided desire to shun and avoid, and place 
some impassable thing, an ocean or a Sahara, be- 
tween us! 



Cedar Chips Thirty-nine 



A Mimtlv of AJiaptation 

And yet— are not these things, too, a subject for 
nifinite wonder, — wonder at the miracle of adapta- 
tion that seems to exist everywhere? For, after all, 
without moral evil how can there be moral virtue? 
If all men, by a miracle, or rather by a transforma- 
tion of our nature from its striking and painful con- 
trasts, were reduced to a dead level of uniform 
goodness and perfection, where would be those trials 
that develop all the grandeur of the great and 
heroic? If Xanthippe did not create the genius of 
a Socrates, she at least has helped us to know 
him better. Without an Antiochus, should we have 
had the heroism of the Maccabees ; the grave chas- 
tity of Susannah, without the perfidy of the elders? 
Had there been no Nero or Domitian, where would 
be the superb record of the countless martyrs of the 
Coliseum ? It needed the malice of a Gesler to 
create a William Tell, the state policy of Napoleon 
to paint on the pages of history the gentle bravery 
of the Due d'Enghien or the fearless manhood of 
Hofer. We could not weep for the martyred nuns 
of Compiegne had there been no Robespierre or 
Marat. And to ascend to the highest— where would 
have been the supreme tragedy of our race, if Jewish 
priests had been generous, and Pilate had hearkened 
to the plea for justice from the lips of his wife? 



Forty Cedar Chips 



lEutl tt|p ISnot of (^aah 

So, too, on a lowlier scale, we find that all good 
seems to arise from evil. Endurance cannot exist 
without hardship, patience without annoyance, se- 
renity without pain, joyousness without injustice, 
chastity without temptation, meekness without pro- 
vocation. If the world was reduced to one dead level 
of happiness, mankind would grow hebetated from 
want of energy. It was cold and hunger that framed 
the flint arrowheads and bone needles, the relics of 
pre-Adamite man over yonder in Kent's Cavern. It 
is the sense of the same evils that puts Australian 
beef on the London markets, and places the skin of 
an Arctic seal on the shoulders of some woman of 
fashion. Necessity, that is, pain, begets energy ; 
and energy develops faculties that otherwise would 
weaken and perish from lack of exercise. In the 
moral order, it is the same. Moral evil begets 
Virtue. The narrow, distorted, and vicious soul, prone 
to deceit and aggression, and chuckling at its own 
trivial and transitory success over some larger and 
nobler mind, is quite unconscious that it has been 
the means, the fertilizing agent, of a larger growth 
in the latter. "All things cooperate unto good for 
those called to be saints," said the Apostle. And 
may not this principle be the strongest proof of 
immortality, — that the greatest evil shall produce 
the largest good, and from the dark and bitter root 
of death shall spring the undying flower of immor- 
tality ? 



Cedar Chips ! orty. 



one 



(§ti}tr itgra tl)an ©ura 

_ In the higher life, I often think that the same 
inability to penetrate into the minds and under- 
stand the feelings of others lies at the root of all 
these racial and religious prejudices that have 
wrought such havoc to humanity. It is the rarest of 
rare talents— this of being able to see things throrgh 
other eyes than ours. If one considers for a mo- 
ment that each mmd has its own idiosyncrasies and 
!u"^ri? '\^ ""T infallibility, it is easy to understand 
the dithculty of reconciling the repellent tendencies 
and mutual antipathies that must exist between races 
and religions. Home influences, early education 
later reading of one-sided and prejudiced books the 
interchange of common and hostile ideas on one 
subject— must of necessity create a bulwark of 
prejudice that it seems impossible to break through 
or subvert. We all know the totally absurd opinions 
that are entertained towards churches of different 
denominations,— towards members of a hostile race 
or a hostile political party. In the vast majority of 
such cases the prejudices are irremovable and in- 
eradicable. No amount of reasoning can convince • 
no appeal can soften. They have never learned to 
go outside themselves and see through others' eyes 
Man to be wise, must study the vices and virtues 
of winch human nature is capable, first in himself, 
and then, in all good faith, in others 



Forty-two Cedar Chips 



I well remember a distinguished convert to the 
Catholic Church telling me that, when a boy, and 
even when he had passed into adolescence, he never 
passed the humble and modest Catholic church m 
the city where he lived, without flying past it at 
racing speed. When I asked him what he dreaded, 
he answered he didn't know ! It was nothing speci- 
fic ; but some vague sensation that there was some- 
thing inside those walls horrible beyond imagina- 
tion ; some occult and dark doings, which were not 
to be examined or approached, but fled from in ter- 
ror. It was clearly his early education.— the home 
and Sunday-school teaching that the Catholic 
Church stood for something unnameable— that it 
was the symbol of darkness, the outer shell and 
simulacrum of everything men shrink from and 
avoid Probably that man would have earned these 
prejudices to his grave if he had not met with some 
one who saw through his eyes, made account of all 
his perverse imaginations, and gradually opened the 
eyes of his mind to see what horrible and unrea 
phantasms had been haunting it, and how needful 
it was to employ the prompt exorcism of reason to 
expel them for ever. And strange to say, this was 
but an accident.— the accident of his sister's con- 
version, and the accident of his proceeding to Lon- 
don in 'a frenzy of zeal and anger, first to remon- 
strate with the priest who had received her into the 
bhurch, and then to convert that priest from the 
errors of Catholicism. He met his Ananias, and 
the scales fell from his eyes. 



Cedar Chips Forty-three 



But if ue were to suppose, per impossible, that 
we could stand by the side of our brothers who 
differ so widely and radically from us, and with a 
sympathy born of Christian charity could enter into 
their passionate prejudices and feelings, and make 
allowance for all the converging causes that led up 
to tms hardening of the heart, and think what we 
ourselves might have been had we been born and 
educated m similar circumstances, how it would 
widen our horizon of thought, help us to look 
around things, instead of merely at them, and help 
us to deal gently with all those unmeaning and irra- 
tional ideas that grow so slowly and take such deep 
and almost ineradicable root in human souls The 
thoughts of men on all possible subjects differ as 
widely as their features ; and even where they ex- 
ternally seem to agree, that is, when placed in words 
or actions, there is still a profound diff-erence And 
we must not suppose that all the wisdom of world 
IS stored up and centered beneath the dura mater of 
our brain Qui vit sans folic n'est pas si sage qu'il 
croit; and whatever wisdom or knowledge we pos- 
sess comes mainly through experience, which al- 
ways teaches the kindred and collateral lesson of 
our own impotence and folly. 



Forty-four Cedar Chips 



(Lift Snaanp 

No man can judge of insanity but the insane. 
There are as many forms of insanity as there are 
brain-cells; and, if you look over the motor and 
sensory areas, and try to study the internal construc- 
tion and ramification of each with its millions of 
cells, and remember how one diseased cell might 
easily set up that want of proportion in ideas, or 
that lack of nerve control which we designate as in- 
sanity, it is easy to perceive the value of the opin- 
ions of experts. There is no stronger argument 
against capital punishment than the impossibility of 
determining who is sane, and who is insane ; and 
there is something pathetic and tragic in the curious 
tradition that a man's life may be made dependent 
on the opinion of two experts who, presumably sane 
themselves, are utterly unqualified to express an 
opinion on the condition of the insane. The secret 
working of the brain-cells of a Plato or a Shakes- 
peare is not more of a mystery to a Hottentot, who 
has just emerged into civilization than the secret 
working of the diseased brain is to one who has 
never had experience in his own mind of that phe- 
nomenal, and yet quite common disturbance. Few 
men pass through life without acting once at least 
in an insane manner; and if we could read human 
thoughts as Omniscience does, what a vast and 
tumultuous asylum would not this earth appear ! 
"This beautiful madhouse of the earth," said Jean 
Paul. "Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound 
and fury, signifying nothing," saith Shakespeare. 



Cedar Chips Forty-five 



Srinainna 

The senses, the imagination, the words of men, 
traditions, the habits of life all around us, the stere- 
otyped forms and manners of society, the lies that 
are fossilized by the ages, the tricks and pranks that 
mask deception under an appearance of bonhomie, 
and, above all, our own poor selves seem to be en- 
gaged in a horrid conspiracy to make our lives one 
long delusion until our final corisinnmatum. To 
know that happiness is in ourselves, and not in our 
circumstances; to be able to take the ordinary and 
accredited beliefs of men and sift them, and ex- 
amine them, and separate the chaff of folly from 
the grain of wisdom ; to look out with our own eyes 
upon the world, and to take sidelights on human 

happenings and events from others' experience, is 

a very rare talent. We run amuck with the crowd 
when the panic of life seizes us. We follow its 
train of thought, adopt its habits, walk in its ways, 
although we loathe ourselves for so doing. It is a 
rare thing to see a strong man step aside and pur- 
sue his own course undeterred by human hostile 
opinion ; who has the strength of silent scorn to up- 
hold him. and let the mad world wag on to destruc- 
tion. "Oh, all you that pass by the way," saith the 
beggar with the crucifix, whilst the gay and happy 
pairs pi youthful lovers, conning flowers or toying 
with jewels, pass down the staircases and corridors 
of life. "Come apart and rest a little while/' was 
the sweet invitation of the Divine Being, who knew 
how easily his poor disciples would throng after the 
ruck and rout of motley crowds to share in their 
poor, sickly, and dishonest adulation. "Come apart," 
— into the desert aloof and alone, — the silent stars 
above your heads, and the Eternal One by your side. 



Forty-six Cedar Chips 



An Example 

I once knew a man of imaginative temperament 
who laboured all his life long under a singular de- 
lusion. He was a merchant in a great city ; and. like 
all other merchants, his daily life was the drudgery 
of living from ten o'clock in the morning to six 
o'clock in the evening in a damp, dirty office, 
screened away from a vault filled with vast punch- 
eons of wine and spirits, cobwebbed and grey with 
the dust of antiquity. The office window, very dirty 
also, and lined with venerable cobwebs, barely al- 
lowed the eye to rest on the blank wall of another 
warehouse about six feet across a narrow alley. 
Even in Summer and at noonday the gas flared 
above his desk ; and through the twilight the figures 
of men — porters., labourers, customers — passed to 
and fro all day long to exchange opinions and trans- 
act business. The daily programme of the poor 
slave was : 

Rise at 8 A. M. 

Breakfast at 8 :15. 

Train to city. 

Office work from 10 A. M. to 6 P. M. 

Train homewards. 

Dinner at 7 P. M. 

Newspaper. 

Bed, 10 P. M. 

Sunday was broken by a morning service and an 
afternoon that seemed interminable. He took a 
yearly holiday at some European watering-place 
where he was killed from ennui and society. 



Cedar Chips Forty.seven 



(Sl^ainpii in a QleUar 

He was a wealthy man, but not a happy man. 
During his first twenty years, buoyed up and carried 
on by the stream of youthful hopefulness and ambi- 
tion, he really exulted in his work, although the 
frictions of daily life began to wear down his 
nerves, and the question would persistently arise 
and refuse an answer: "Whereunto tends all this 
waste and work?" Then, one day, he took up a 
volume of essays dealing with the attractions of 
country life ; the folly of treading the daily mill until 
we dropped into the grave ; and the wisdom of saying 
at some period or other of life, "Soul, sleep now, 
and take thy rest !" The idea haunted him for weeks 
and weeks ; and the recollection of a certain pretty 
villa down near the sea, where he had spent a few 
summer weeks, came up at office-time to disturb 
his serenity, and compel him to think that he was 
spending all the most glorious years of his life — a 
slave chained in a cellar. One day, too, a farming 
acquaintance of his dropped in, and, looking in a 
half-frightened way about the lugubrious place, said : 
"Good heavens, man, surely you don't live here? 
Why, one hour of these wine-smells and spirit- 
odours would chloroform me into eternity! Come 
out, man, and live a human life! Come out, and see 
our trees and rivers, and hear the winds whistling, 
and the brooks laughing, and the birds singing, and 
breathe the honest air of heaven, and not the me- 
phitic vapours of the tomb." The merchant shook 
his head, but the lesson went home. 



Forty-eight Cedar Chips 



He now bent eagerly to his task, because he had 
a definite object before him. — namely, to build up 
as rapidly as possible a fortune that would help him 
to get away from the chain-gang and the format, and 
spend the evening of his life in tranquil study (for 
he was a reader) and calm contemplation and en- 
joyment of nature unto the end. One morning he 
noticed a grey patch over his left ear; and he 
thought, I must push on and work harder, if I am 
to have time for my evening holiday at the end. 
And all the time that villa above the sea would float 
in a misty picture, framed in cloud shadows, but' 
richly gilded, above his dusty, ink-stained desk ; and 
ever>' night, as he closed the latter with a snap, he 
looked around and said : "Only a little longer ; a 
few years more, and farewell, you dusty wine-bins 
and cobwebbed bottles, for ever and ever!" And 
then he began to watch the papers for advertise- 
ments of sales of seaside villas ; and he began to 
dream, and dream, and ever dream of vast, beau- 
tiful oceans, with the white flame of a sail on the 
horizon, and long, purple twilights that dreamed 
themselves away into night, and a dusky library 
crammed with all precious volumes, and peace, peace, 
and rest, rest, for the long evenings of a happy life! 



Cedar Chips Forty-i 



At last the wished- for opportunity seemed to 
arise in accordance with his wishes. He had seen 
in the late springtime just the thing he had dreamed 
of so long, — the long white villa facing the ocean, 
the little lawn in front sloping gently downwards ; 
the sudden, abrupt cliff, the waves crawling or tum- 
bling in hoarse riotousness beneath ; and, behind, the 
deep, dewy fields of a valley, where a brown cow 
was grazing calmly, and a few sheep dotted the 
upland beyond, where the trees fringed the horizon 
and broke up the blue radiance of the sky. If he 
could have designed into actual existence the place 
and the circumstances he had so often desired, it 
could not have been better framed unto his wishes. 
With beating heart he read the legend "To Let" on 
the window-pane, and hastened to inquire — and pur- 
chase. He was so eager now to get away from the 
wine cave and the cellar that he would not hire the 
place. No ! he should become the absolute owner, 
so that no man could ever disturb his inheritance of 
such an elysium. It should be his from the zenith 
to the nadir, — from the centre of the earth to the 
dome of heaven ; and no man should venture on the 
sacred precincts without license or on trespass. He 
was surprised., almost shocked, to find how little was 
asked for it. He closed the bargain at once, and 
became the happy possessor. 



F'^'y Cedar Chips 



Then the ravens began to croak. They predicted 
that he would tire of the place in a month, in a 
quarter, at furthest in a year. "Wait," they said, 
"till November. Wait till the rains come down and 
the sea is blotted out, and he shall not see from 
week's end to week's end the face of a human being, 
except a half-tipsy fisherman or a strait-laced coast 
guard. Then he will pine for the electric light and 
tram, for the roar and bustle of the city." He heard 
it all, and calmly winked to himself. Envy! envy! 
The bane of gods and men ! The ever-present, never- 
exorcised demon that haunts all human hearts, and 
makes them sink at the thought of others' happiness ! 
No matter : he will go on in spite of all ; nay, he 
will bring down all these croakers in the early Sum- 
mer and kill them, one by one, by the spectacle of 
his happiness! Well^ he did bring them down, but 
happily there was no homicide. They came, ad- 
mired, rejoiced, and departed. He showed them how 
easily and pleasantly one could slip down in undress 
in the early, warm summer morning, and descend- 
ing the spiral iron ladder, plunge at once into the 
glorious sea. He taught them how to lounge, and 
kill time, and loll upon garden chairs after dinner, 
and smoke away the long, delicious summer even- 
ings, and play nap in the open air, and drink — 
sherbet? And if any landsman tired of the sea, 
he took him to the valley and expatiated upon cows 
and corn. 



Cedar Chips F"^"""* 



They all admitted that it was glorious, delicious, 
a fragment of Eden very much improved, because 
for the sluggish Tigris here was the heaving and 
restless, the treacherous and magic sea. They all 
said how delightful it was to go to sleep with your 
high windows open, and the breath of the clover 
was borne into your bedroom with the murmurs 
of the enchanted sea ; and how transcendently pleas- 
ant it was to sit down to one's breakfast after an ap- 
petising morning bath, and break your egg or fish 
whilst you glanced at the broad levels of shining 
sea before the window. But those evenings, those 
celestial evenings, when the setting sun empurpled 
the great cliffs opposite, and the vast mirror of the 
ocean modestly mirrored in pink and gold the gor- 
geous decorations of rock and headland; and tiny 
feathers of yacht-sails, or the larger canvases of 
fishing-boats swept as in a hollow mirror from rim 
to rim of the horizon ; and the plash of oars came 
up from the sea; and the muffled voices of young 
girls came borne in upon the warm breeze ; and the 
great moon came up blood-red from her sea-bath 
and paled into yellow glory as she mounted her 
steep escarpment of the sky, — ah, those celestial 
evenings ! No wonder anxious hearts should whis- 
per, in affected depreciation : "You have no chance 
of heaven, old man, after this!" 



f-fty-*^" Cedar Chips 



a ParaMarl" 

But he would only laugh — the happy possessor 
always laughs — and puff away at his cigar in happy 
contentment, and rail at the dusty city, and the 
noises and the cobwebbed cellar, and say : "My dear 
fellow, half the world does not know what life is." 

And the young men applauded and said : 

"Quite right. When you've made your pile, it 
is wise and right to step down and aside, and leave 
a chance for the young." 

But the old men, although they hankered after 
such freedom and happiness, whispered to each 
other as they sped upwards to the city by the even- 
ing train : 

"Do you know, I think old seemed to 

look wistfully after us. Wait till November! I'd 
bet a dozen of the best Havanas he'll be back in his 
office again I" 

But their wives said : 

"What a delightful place for children to play 
in for three months of Summer! What a shame 
that such a place should be in the hands of a 
wretched old bachelor!" 

They had just been praising his cook, and his 
dinners, and his delicious tea ; they had still wet on 
their pretty lips : 

"Oh, Mr. , what a Paradise!" 



Cedar Chips Fifty-three 



And so the weeks sped on. The "Villa" had 
almost become a show place. Every visitor to the 
seaside should see it, and praise it. The owner was 
very happy. 

Sometimes, indeed, the days dragged heavily on- 
ward. It was not always sunshine. There were 
times when a cold, grey look was on the sea, and 
the cliffs in the distance across the bay looked 
black and threatening ; and one by one, the visitors 
were departing for their winter homes, and the 
faces of the little children began to disappear. Then 
the terrific tyranny of old habits began to assert 
itself. The holiday was over; and every fibre and 
muscle began to clamor for old occupations, — the 
never-ceasing, ever-rolling routine of hours conse- 
crated to business, and hostile to slothfulness. He 
argued and expostulated against the tyranny in 
vain. He pleaded that he had had a life of unre- 
mitting toil and anxiety ; that he had a right to rest 
in the evening of life ; that he was past labour now ; 
and that peace and dignity were the rightful per- 
quisites and perogatives of age. In vain! Every 
faculty was clamouring for employment, protesting 
against the degredation of being wasted away in 
rusty sloth ; and the imagination, spurred by the 
tyranny of habit, and beaten back upon itself by 
the frigid aspect of external nature, began to call 
up with tender and solemn pity the days of labour 
that had passed; the fifty years in the warehouse; 
and all the many circumstances, which, bald and 
vulgar and prosaic enough in reality, came now 
from the caves of the past under the softened and 
hallowed light of memory, the great transformer, 
and scene-shiifter, and stage-manager of life. 



f'fty-f*'" Cedar Chips 



He tried to shake off the despondency, but in 
vain. He set himself, during these sad September 
days, to the task of reading and working. He laid 
out a programme for the Winter months. He would 
read Shakespeare through and through. He com- 
menced. After half an hour's conscientious labour 
on "Hamlet" he grew tired, and went out. Yes! 
there was the calm, irresponsive. Sphinx-like face 
of the sea, cold and grey like that battered and 
mutilated demon-face that stares over the desert 
sands, and seems to be contemplating infinity from 
eternity. He went back to his beautiful library, 
sick at heart. The early fires were burning in the 
grate, — of summer valedictory, of winter premon- 
itory. The beautiful books in all manner of costly 
bindings gleamed from the shelves ; and between 
them and above them, shone fair pictures, with 
deep, rich, gorgeous frames ; and lapping their 
edges were fairy palms and costly evergreens, pur- 
chased in the richest nurseries in the city. What 
do I want? the man cried. Here is what I have 
been seeking after for thirty years; and lo! it is 
ashes in my mouth. He went out again. Not a sail 
flamed across the surface of the deep ; not a fishing- 
boat made a speck across the grey monotony. And 
all was silent, songs of maidens, laughter of chil- 
dren, except with the sounds of eternity. 



Cedar Chips F^'y-fiv 



ICnnpUnpfla 

Two hours to luncheon! He took his cane and 
went out. He called on the curate, asked, begged, 
implored him to dine with him. He had not trou- 
bled much about him while the summer visitors 
were flitting around. He strolled over the cliffs. 
A few peasants were digging out potatoes ; the 
white sheep nibbled lazily the short grass ; far be- 
neath, the waves rolled heavily in, heaving as if in 
gasps of spent energy their bulk of water against 
the broken boulders ; the grey, solemn light lay 
brooding over sea and land ; far away, far, far away, 
on the horizon line, a plume of dark vapour marked 
the course of a passing ship. And everywhere si- 
lence, deep, terrible silence as of chaos before the 
turbulent voices of humanity were heard ; as of a 
ruined world, when the voice of humanity will be 
heard no more, — silence, except for the wash of 
the waters, that would be soothing perhaps to tired 
and worn nerves, but that now sounded harsh and 
hoarse in the ears of the man who had passed 
out of touch with nature, because he had stepped 
out of his place, and refused to take his part in the 
vast working-sheds and laboratories of the universe. 



f'f'y-^''' Cedar Chips 



He lunched with little appetite, and drank more 
than was good for him. Then he lounged along 
the lawn and smoked cigar after cigar. Twenty- 
times he looked at his watch, and counted the hours 
to dinner. He took up "Hamlet" again; and re- 
mained for some time brooding over the soliloquy 
of suicide. He flung down the book, and went out. 
He tried to get into conversation with a few rough, 
weather-tanned fishermen, who lounged up against 
the quay wall. He could only elicit a monosyllable. 
He walked over the cliffs again ; and after another 
two hours of misery, he returned to dinner. The 
good-natured curate was there. Two hours passed 
pleasantly by. Then a sick-call was brought, and 
the man was again alone, — alone with one word 
the curate, with no ill intention, had spoken : "How 
in God's name, can you live here., after your ex- 
perience of city life?" He brooded over it the 
whole evening through. He went to bed in a cheer- 
less mood, and dreamt that the spirit of the Sea, 
the Old Man of the Sea, stood beside his bed, and 
kept murmuring all the night through, — "Alone!" 
"Alone!" "Alone!" He woke up in the dreary 
dawn, and heard the hoarse wash of the sea mur- 
muring: "Alone!" "Alone!" "Alone!" 



Cedar Chips Fifty-seven 



And suddenly, swiftly, as if in a sudden eclipse 
of light and cessation of sound, the Winter closed 
in. There never had been so short a Summer. 
There had been no Autumn. The days seemed to 
close up, as you would close a telescope ; and the 
nights swooped down and hung their raven wings, 
poised above the desolation of nature, as if they 
could never close and vanish again. The dreadful 
loneliness and idleness hung heavily on the spirit of 
the man. He began to loathe fhe face of the sea. 
It seemed to stare back on him from its great ex- 
panses, cold and colourless as a corpse ; and the 
great cliffs beyond seemed to close in like walls of 
a grave of granite, so dark and gloomy, so hard and 
adamantine they seemed. He ceased gazing on the 
gloomy spectacle, and turned aside to the valley. 
Here, too, was all the aspect of wintry desolation — 
heavy fogs morning and evening, withered brack- 
en, blanched grass which the cows ate reluctantly, 
and broken mangolds which his workmen had scat- 
tered here and there across the field. And if he 
lifted his eyes, there afar off was the thin dark line 
of the horizon, where the cold blue light seemed to 
shiver under the lowering and ragged skies. 



f'f'y-^'g*'' Cedar Chips 



A (UrtBtfi 

To accentuate his misery, the morning paper 
brought news of the great city, — of its theatres, with 
new plays and briUiant companies ; of its concerts, 
where world-famed artists sang for money or char- 
ity; of great balls with military bands, and long 
columns of the names of citizens well-known to him ; 
and the vision of the brilliant and well-lighted city, 
of its long rows of gas lamps and electric lamps, of 
its rumbling tramcars, its wet pavements, the crowds 
of men and women passing to and fro, and all the 
human and even tender associations which are every- 
where leagued with great masses of humanity, rose 
up before him as he sauntered in melancholy mad- 
ness above the sea, or stared, with his finger in the 
pages of the unread book, at the coals that sparkled 
and burned in the grate by his lonely hearthside. 
It was so sad, nothing but shame and the dread of 
being laughed at kept him from fleeing instantly 
from the uncanny place. Then one day his two 
servants gave notice simultaneously. It capped his 
climax of misery. Next evening he was in the city. 



Cedar Chips Fifty-nine 



lark Again 

Although he had been but a few weeks absent, 
he felt like a stranger in a strange land. The tumult 
of the streets thrilled him through and through ; 
the vibration of the tramcar seemed to penetrate 
his nerves, and he trembled as he rose up awk- 
wardly from the seat, and groped his way with 
many a stop and stumble towards the entrance. He 
glided like a shamed ghost through the streets, 
afraid to be recognized; afraid of the Hallo, old 
man! which would mean insufferable things. He 
watched with the interest of a child who had come 
up to the city for the first time, the lighted shops, 
the sparkling jewelry, the long counters in ware- 
houses, with their lines of well-groomed clerks and 
well-dressed girls, curious, watchful, eager; he 
sniffed up the odours from the restaurants as a 
hungry man maddened with the want of food ; he 
could almost have hugged the newsboys, who shout- 
ed: B-e-evening Echo-o-o! At last he stood at 
the entrance to the narrow street where the offices 
and warehouses were, and paused. How would he 
enter? How face the welcome he was sure to re- 
ceive; or worse still, the smiles and winks of his 
employes, with their deadly, yet kindly meaning: / 
told you! 



Sixty Cedar Chips 



A Bramatir £ntrg 

He did the wisest thing he could do under the 
circumstances. He entered the old premises dra- 
matically. That is — he almost leaped in upon the 
sawdusted flags, shouted to the alarmed porters 
and labourers: "Clear out of my way!" pushed 
one or two aside, who thought an escaped maniac 
had got amongst them, and then took a hop, step 
and jump, and landed safely in his old chair beside 
the grimy, ink-covered desk. When he was recog- 
nised there was a shout of laughter, and all was 
over. The ancient partner came in. 

"You've come back?" 

"Yes! Don't say, for God's sake, 'I knew it!' 
or 'I told you so!' " 

"All right!" 

"I'll take my old place and hand you back the 
rhino !" 

"Very good. 'Twas a tight shave though. Mc- 
Allister wanted to throw ten thousand into the 
concern to-day." 

"You didn't?" with a face of alarm. 

"No ! I expected something. See ! your name 
is yet on our bill-heads !" 

"Thanks, old man! Now, tell me, is the old 
house let as yet?" 



Cedar Chips Sxiiy-one 



"I'm not sure. I think not. The bills were in 
the window last Sunday." 

"Would you — would you — mind seeing after it 
for me ?" 

"All right. To-morrow, or perhaps Thursday — " 

"Great Scott, man ! Some pedler will have swal- 
lowed it up by then. Look here ! 'Tis only five 
o'clock. Run down to Henry's, will you?" 

"All right. You're in the deuce of a fright." 

"No matter. And ask Henry to put in an ad. 
to-morrow : 

"To be let or sold. Beautiful marine villa; 
splendid sea view; lawn; spiral staircase to sea; 
beach ; meadow-land, etc., etc. But — no name ! mind, 
no name !" 

"All right ! Of course, you're coming to us until 
you settle?" 

"May I? You're too good. But how can I 
face Kate? She'll tonnent the life out of me!" 

"Never fear! She's too glad to see you back. 
And won't the youngsters kick up the deuce of a 
shindy!" 

"Gosh ! I hope they will. Let me see. I have 
time to run down to London. I must bring them 
something. You'll come back, won't you, and tell 
us about the house?" 



Si^-two Cedar Chips 



Then he sank into a pleasant reverie, watching 
all the while the corpulent and pompous puncheons, 
and seeming to expect every moment a salvo from 
the vast tiers of wine bottles that seemed like tiny- 
batteries of artillery peeping from their loopholes 
and embrasures. When no one was looking, he 
stepped softly down from his desk, and going over 
he actually kissed the steel ribs of an old Jack 
FalstafT of a whiskey cask, that had shone and 
glistened in its dusty cave for half a century. Then 
closing-time came, his partner returned, and he 
stepped out on the wet pavement again. For a 
moment he watched the crowd of people passing 
and repassing, a motley crowd, made up of every 
element of humanity, from the young empresses 
who, clad in their furs and sealskins, seemed to 
spurn the very flags beneath their feet, to the poor, 
decrepit creatures who begged an alms, or the 
wretched and degraded humanity which gathered 
around the doors of saloons. Then, with a sigh 
and a little smile he passed on, paused for a mo- 
ment, and leaned over the parapet of the bridge 
and saw a Milky Way of lights on quays and ships 
and waves, and then, humbled and happy, he ac- 
companied his partner to his hospitable home. 



Cedar Chips Sixty-three 



A few weeks later he came in as usual one morn- 
ing to business, put up his overcoat and hat, sorted, 
opened, and read his letters, wrote his replies, gave 
his little orders here and there, read the morning 
paper, and went out to a neighbouring restaurant 
at the men's dinner hour, for a modest lunch. When 
one o'clock had struck, and the porters and labour- 
ers trooped back from dinner, they found him asleep 
in his office chair. It was unusual, but they did not 
mind. "Old age!" they said. Later on in the day, 
he still slept ; and then they thought he was un- 
usually still. They shook him up and called his 
name. There was no answer, — none until the Great 
Assize. He had died at his task, — chained as he 
would have said with bitterness a few months ago, 
chained like a galley-slave to his task. But the bit- 
terness had disappeared under the test of experi- 
ence. He had died in harness, in the midst of his 
work ; and what death could be more honourable or 
desirable ? 



Si^-four Cedar Chips 



As I closed these random reflections on things in 
general, I sat in my garden in the twilight of a long 
summer evening. The sun had set, and the faint 
light was wavering between day and night. A huge 
bat was flying round and round in circles that seemed 
to be grooved for him in the air. Over my head a tiny 
spider hung down on a single thread. There was an 
cdour of jasmine and mignonette in the warm air. 
Close to my head was a thick clump of laurel; and 
one white tea-rose hung her beautiful petals against 
it as if for support. On the rim of one fair petal 
was a brown line, the first symptom and harbinger 
of decay. The air was so still I could hear her say : 

"Why am I sad?" you ask. "Because in a few 
weeks, a few days, I shall be dead, — buried there 
beneath the brown earth, whilst you are a perennial, 
an immortal !" 

"And is death an evil, and is immortality on 
earth a boon?" asked the spirit of the laurel. 

"Certainly," said the rose. "Even my short life 
beneath the blue sky, kissed by the winds, fanned 
by the wings of birds, has been supremely happy." 

"True, but see what is before me!" said the 
spirit of the laurel. "I have no Summer like you. 
because I am not a flower. But I have a Winter 
before me, and many, many Winters. Think of 
eight hours of pallid sunshine, and sixteen hours 
of darkness deep as the pit ; think of the rough 
winds that tear through me, the frosts that bite me, 
the snows that lean their icy burden on me, the 
lightnings that blast me, the men who shear and 
clip every little tiny shoot I put forth, until now. 
in my old age, I am childless and flowerless as the 
grave. Oh, my little sister, grieve not. You have 
been loved. That atones for death. Do not covet 
an immortality of loveless desolation !" 

And the rose said : 

"Yea. Be it so. Only let me lean against thee 
until the last." 



Index Sixty-five 

(Jfrnm "^arrrga") 

PAGE 

Three Questions § 84 Autumn 1 

Sentiment § 73 Spring 2 

Contrasts of Life §50 " 3 

A Defeat §51 " 4 

A Returned Exile § 17 Autumn 5 

Death, the Hope-Giver §18 " 6 

The Man With the Hoe § 39 Summer 7 

Idleness §40 " 8 

Some Great Ideal §41 " 9 

Epitaphs §42 " 10 

An Impartial but Unreasonable Thing... § 22 Autumn 11 

A Personal Diagnosis § 23 " 12 

A Secret Science §24 " 13 

Other Sciences §27 " 14 

Theology a Commonage §26 " 15 

The Great Rebellion §27 " 16 

An Unscientific Departure §28 " 17 

Theology a Science §29 " 18 

No Mystery in Medicine §30 " 19 

Ultra Crepidam §31 " 20 

An Autumnal Type §51 " 21 

Guarda e Passa §52 " 22 

A Philosopher §53 " 23 

Another Type §54 " 24 

Early Education §55 " 25 

Disillusion §56 " 26 

Education and Experience § 57 " 27 



Sixty-six Index 

PAGE 

Justice Blind § 58 Autumn 28 

A Fagin University § 59 " 29 

Cirrhi and Cumuli §61 " 30 

An Evening Star §62 " 31 

My Doppelganger §63 " 32 

An Apology for Anger § 64 " 33 

Res Caducae §65 " 34 

Mocking the Eternal § 66 " 35 

Infinite Pity §67 " 36 

A Distinction §68 " 37 

A Good Shepherd §69 " 38 

The Miracle of Adaptation §70 " 39 

Evil the Root of Good §71 " 40 

Other Eyes than Ours § 71 Summer 41 

Early Prejudices §72 " 42 

The Wisdom of Experience §73 " 43 

The Insane §74 " 44 

Delusions §75 " 45 

An Example § 76 " 46 

Chained in a Cellar §77 " 47 

Only a Little Longer §78 " 48 

"To Let" §79 " 49 

Ridiculed §80 " 50 

A Fragment of Eden §81 " 51 

"What a Paradise"! §82 " 52 

Memory §83 " 53 

Despondency § 84 " 54 

Loneliness § 85 " 55 

Alone! §86 " 56 

Winter Closes In §87 " 57 

A Crisis §88 " 58 

Back Again §89 " 59 

A Dramatic Entry §90 " 60 

A Reverie §91 " 62 

And Then? §92 " 63 

A Garden Dialogue §101 " 64 



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